


Mothership

by AVirtoMusae



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Garcy endgame, Gen, Jiya is great, Lucy destroys the mothership, Season 2, What-If, everyone is a mess, everyone is kinda holding it together by a thread, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-01 07:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14515707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVirtoMusae/pseuds/AVirtoMusae
Summary: Lucy destroys the Mothership. The Time Team will do anything to get her back.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> so this is something that has been growing in my mind since i watched the premier of season ii and i felt like i needed to write it and hope yall enjoy

Lucy slips the grenade into a bag on her leg that she's managed to make from the sheet in her room at Rittenhouse. She doesn't use the bag that Rittenhouse gave her, doesn't trust Emma and her mother won't look through it. She can’t risk being found out before she succeeds. She can’t risk losing this opportunity because she knows she will only ever have this one chance to succeed. If she doesn’t, then no one will be able to stop Rittenhouse, and she can’t allow that. 

She's already packed a grenade when Wyatt and Rufus show up. She hands them one and tells them what to do and hugs them. She thought they were dead, and well — it still might be the last time she ever sees them. She takes a moment to memorize their faces, to revel in the fact that they are still alive. It gives her hope, even if the look Wyatt gives her when she tells him her plan is one of fear. 

But she has hope and resolve. She wonders what they think of this dead-eyed woman they see before her, but she knows she will never know. She just has to be okay with that. 

.oOo.

She doesn't try to kill Nicholas Keynes with a pillow, although she certainly considers it. But she knows that if Wyatt and Rufus succeed or that if she herself succeeds, it won't matter. He'll still be either stuck or dead. Like the rest of them. 

When her mother comes back in, she just gives Lucy a proud smile. It makes Lucy’s skin crawl, but she does her best to ignore it. She’s spent six weeks with her skin crawling, ignoring the dead look in her eyes every time she looks in the mirror. But her mother’s pride, the one thing she spent years seeking, is now more of a burden.

It makes her feel dirty.

She wishes she had smothered Nicholas Keynes with that pillow, even if she had failed, at least she would not have felt like this. 

.oOo.

Marie and Irene Curie are still at the Mothership when Lucy and Rittenhouse arrive. Lucy still keeps Emma from firing by manipulating her mother. Without Emma finding the grenade, there's less of a reason to kill her too. It would be less excusable. 

Lucy sees Wyatt and Rufus approach as she gets into the Mothership, but she says nothing. She gives no indication that she can see them. 

She takes in a last look at her mother, at the face of the woman who raised her, who groomed her, who lied to her all her life. As she gets her seatbelt on, she grabs the pin out of the grenade, and then it's only a short wait. 

Her vision goes out in fire. For a second, however, all she can think of is that car in sophomore year, of how she was trapped and so, so scared of disappointing her mother. She wonders what her mother thinks of her now, now that she’s done this. Despite the fire all around her, all she can think of is drowning. 

She can just barely hear screaming over her own screams of pain. But she knows the others are burning with her. She can see ghosts of their faces in the flames. And then the Mothership explodes, and Lucy’s world vanishes.

.oOo.

Wyatt screams, and Rufus chokes on his own sobs. Just minutes ago, Rufus had been telling Wyatt to admit that he is in love with Lucy, but now Lucy is gone. A charred corpse. She lays in the smoldering ruins of the Mothership. Rufus and Wyatt can see the other corpses too, but they can’t tell them apart, not so charred.

Rufus finds himself wishing that Wyatt had let Agent Christopher come with them. She would have known what to do, would have kept a clear and impartial head. He doesn’t think he can drag Wyatt away. Wyatt is so much stronger than he is, and Wyatt is staring at the scene in horror.

And so it is Rufus who notices the important detail that lets him identify Lucy’s body. It is almost morbidly funny that it is he who would notice this and not Wyatt. They’re both sobbing, but Wyatt is frozen and numb, and Rufus is panicking. He’s just lost one of his best friends in a death he and Wyatt only just barely avoided six weeks ago. 

Rufus walks over to the corpse with the locket around its neck, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is Lucy. “Wyatt,” he calls out, and together they take her body back on the Lifeboat.

.oOo.

Denise, Connor, and Jiya are all horrified when they see Wyatt carry the burned body out of the Lifeboat. Jiya presses her hands to her mouth and Connor just takes a long drink and sits down. Denise just stares at the body in shock and asks, “What happened?”

Wyatt and Rufus haltingly explain what they think happened and what they know happened to Lucy. And that is when Denise knows what she needs to do. 

.oOo.

Garcia looks up when Agent Christopher enters his cell and curls his lips into a sneer. The look on her face is what tells him something is up, and he wants to fight her when she does not tell him immediately. He hates this whole solitary confinement thing, being cut off from the rest of the world and cut off from fighting Rittenhouse. 

“We need your help.”

“I'll only talk to Lucy.”

Agent Christopher sighs and continues on as though he had said nothing. “We know Rittenhouse has placed sleeper agents throughout history. Can they be activated without the Mothership?”

Garcia stares at her. “I'll only talk to Lucy.” He knows it's a useless protest now that the agent has started talking.

“Lucy's gone,” Agent Christopher says heavily, and Garcia's world drops out from under him. 

“What?” he hisses, eyes flashing in anger. He stands up, and at his full height, he towers over the agent “You lost her?! Your most valuable and you lost her?!” The agent flinches, but Garcia does not care. “What, did you let Rittenhouse —”

“The last six weeks have been very trying,” the agent cuts him off. “After the explosion at Mason Industries, we have been busting our asses off to get the Lifeboat repaired so we can stop Rittenhouse from destroying history. And for your information, we were doing everything to try to find her.”

Garcia's eyes narrow. “What do you mea —” And then it hits him. The Mothership is gone. Voice hoarse he asks, “Lucy blew up the Mothership?”

Agent Christopher swallows. “Yes. We have what remains of her, but it isn't pretty.”

Garcia points a finger at the agent. “You are going to get me out of here. NOW!”

.oOo.

Jiya is sitting in the kitchen, eating dinner with Rufus (and Connor, who apparently cannot get a hint that Jiya and Rufus are on a date). She feels scared and irritated almost all the time, and dinner with her boyfriend helps with that. It makes everything feel normal and mundane, and she likes the surety it provides. She doesn’t like to trust in the next day, and the loss of Lucy has struck all of them hard even though she has been missing for weeks. 

Jiya can tell that they are all just hanging on by a thread. She knows they are all trying to hide it, but it is just an impossible thing to avoid. She faints halfway through dinner. She isn’t expecting it, and Rufus just barely manages to catch her in time while Connor stares at her in alarm. 

Her eyes widen at what she sees when her eyes open. She’s still in the bunker but at the same time, she is not as well. She sees Lucy (for really, who else can that be) standing above her and offering Jiya a hand up.


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: jiya has some internalized ableism so like if that is going to be a problem, skip the second section. summary of that section available at the bottom.

Lucy feels like she’s falling and burning and drowning all at once. All she is aware of is the pain and the darkness. If she could concretely feel her body, then she would say that there is this pit in her stomach and that it keeps growing, that her skin is turning to ash. But she doesn’t. She can’t feel any of it. 

She tries to breathe, and she can’t feel anything. She’s trapped, more trapped than she has ever felt before. She is collapsing in on herself like a black hole and exploding like a supernova all at once. She can’t catch her breath. She’s stuck. She’s stuck. She’s stuck. Dying. Dying. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. 

She wrenches her eyes open. Her surroundings keep changing almost as though she is trapped in a kaleidoscope in the hands of a small child. Lucy looks around as she tries to determine what is happening. She needs to know where Emma, her mother, and Nicholas Keynes are. But she doesn’t see them. She has no idea where they are or even where she is, for that matter. 

She tries to breathe again, and once again, it doesn’t work. She spins around frantically, but she is forced to stop when that just makes the kaleidoscope effect worse. It’s like the Lifeboat but worse. And that’s when it crashes down on her like a wave pulling down an unsuspecting child: She’s dead, and she’s lost in time, and she has no idea how to escape. 

She sees a light, and she’s drawn towards it. It doesn’t take her long to recognize the source of the light as Jiya. Lucy acts on instinct to help Jiya up. Lucy is surprised to note that she actually has any sort of physical form and that she can see herself at all. She has to restrain herself from vomiting. 

“Jiya?” Lucy asks.

“Lucy?” and then Jiya vanishes. 

.oOo.

Jiya opens her eyes to Rufus and Connor standing above her. She stares up at them, eyes wide. She almost lets the words slide across her lips, almost tells them that she saw Lucy, but something holds her back. She does not want them to worry more for her health. She can see the way it burdens them. She knows the worried looks they always give her, and she refuses to give them more reason to fear for her safety. She can handle this herself.

“Are you okay?” Rufus asks, while Connor comments on the fact this has been her third seizure today and asks if she needs a doctor. 

Jiya shakes her head and stumbles to her feet. She thinks she could do with a drink. She found vodka in a storage closet last week, amusing her to no end because she had previously assumed this was a Cold War-era bunker. She doesn’t go for a drink though, because even though she doesn’t want anyone else worrying about her, she worries. She doesn’t want the alcohol to make her seizures worse. 

“I’m fine. Where is Agent Christopher?”

Rufus grimaces. “Visiting Flynn. Apparently we need him to solve our problems now.”

Jiya sighes, trying to find some silver lining to this. “If he can help us, then why not use him?” It’s not that she isn’t scared of Flynn because she is. She’s terrified of him, and she hates that he tried to have her boyfriend killed. It’s just that everything else looks so helpless, she has to be optimistic. 

“Because he’s psycho?” Rufus reminds her.

Jiya rolls her eyes. “Obviously. But he’s the only person who wants Rittenhouse gone more than we do, and didn’t you mention he has this thing about Lucy and this journal — maybe we can ask him if it says anything about getting Lucy back!”

Rufus stares at her, eyes wide. “Wait, if you remember the journal, then don’t we have to get her back in order for her to finish writing it? Unless he was lying or delusional, which now that I mention it, sounds like a much more likely option.” Rufus flaps his hands to help illustrate his point. Connor points to Rufus and nods his head to indicate that he agrees. 

.oOo.

Denise questions her life choices. She’s sitting with her family on the sofa, Michelle curled up against her in a silent display of support. Her children stare at whatever show is on the television while she and Michelle have a conversation in silent gestures.

Denise: I don’t like what I have to do.

Michelle: It will be okay. I support you. It will be okay.

Denise: What if it isn’t?

Michelle: You’ll make sure it is. We’ll make sure. I trust you.

Denise: I love you.

Michelle: I know. 

With Michelle, Denise doesn’t have to say her insecurities aloud. She can just know, just get support without worrying about disappointing anyone or destroying the world. Denise ignores the guilt in her stomach about what she’s going to do. She’s going to free a time-travelling terrorist from prison, and that’s terrifying. She just hopes that Michelle is right, that she’s going to be okay. 

.oOo.

Garcia hates that Lucy is dead because of Rittenhouse and there is nothing he can do. He wonders about what must have happened to her to drive her so far, to make her so willing to destroy herself to destroy Rittenhouse. He knows what he is willing to do. But before, well, he would have assumed she would have quaked at the idea of destroying the Mothership, herself, or her mother. He knows how she was. She never would have killed anyone if there were even a chance of being able to do things another way. 

He knows what Rittenhouse is like on the outside, to observers and people who question it. He knows that Lucy was taken. But how had she acted inside? What did she do? What did they do to her? He desperately wants to know, and he squashes the part of him that is scared to find out.

He lets the mantra of: you failed again you failed again youfailedagainyoufailedagain become the driving beat of his mind. He only pays attention for when Agent Christopher will come to get him out, but he does not trust that that will ever happen. So he sits. Lets him sink into reminders of how much of a failure he is, how unworthy and pathetic. He lets himself think into the thoughts of revenge, of putting bullets in Rittenhouse agents, one for each person in Rittenhouse. He thinks of torturing Rittenhouse agents. The famous ones and the less famous ones. 

He is clenching his fists by the time the signal comes. He grabs the mask that Denise slipped him and slips it over his face. Time to escape.

.oOo.

When Garcia makes it to the bunker, he almost regrets having left solitary confinement. The bunker is almost more dingy and sterile than his cell. Certainly less roomy.

He can't help but look around. He clings to Lucy's journal as he tries to find Lucy's body. 

He punches the wall when he sees her, refusing to hold that back because fuck is her angry. How dare she leave him like everyone else! How dare she sacrifice herself without him! They were supposed to fight Rittenhouse together! 

He ignores the scared and angry looks that they all give him. He doesn't look at their faces and ignores that they follow him to Lucy and that they won't give him time on his own to mourn her. He sees the necklace around Lucy's neck. He rips it from her and places it in his own pocket. More people lost forever because of him. No one to remember Lucy's sister. No one to remember the person Lucy will become. He hates this. 

He storms away with a grumpy comment directed at the team.

.oOo. 

Wyatt isn't taking Lucy's death well either. Since they brought back her corpse, he has not been back to see her again. He can pretend she's still just missing so long as he doesn't look.

All of this is horribly familiar to him. It's all like Jessica, it echoes the way she died, and it stings. He wants Lucy to be back so he can hug her and tell her all his regrets. He knows Rufus is right, that he's in love with her.

He pulls himself out of his room to go to the kitchen. He has to be a good soldier and keep going. It's when he gets there that he gets the worst shock. He pulls out his gun and aims it at the intruder. “Flynn?!”

Flynn salutes him. “What, did no one inform you that I'd be here? Seems like quite the oversight, but I guess they didn't think you'd need to know.”

Wyatt lunges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jiya wakes up and does not tell connor and rufus about seeing lucy in her vision and they discuss the merits of working with flynn (jiya for, rufus against, connor against)
> 
> i appreciated your lovely comments last time thank you so much!! comments are very appreciated


	3. Chapter Two

Lucy doesn’t know what to think when Jiya flickers a couple of times and then vanishes suddenly. The one familiarity in this shifting terror is gone, and Lucy does not know if she has ever felt so alone, even when Amy was first unwritten from time and her whole world shifted suddenly on her. She’s almost surprised that dying on the Mothership while jumping hasn’t unwritten her as well, but she supposes that it is good that it didn’t. She does not know what she would do if she were forgotten too, but then, she supposes that she would not exactly have to worry about that if she were.

Lucy takes a minute to regret leaving her friends. She doesn’t regret what she did — she doesn’t think she could possibly regret taking the chance to destroy Rittenhouse. But she regrets that she had to leave her friends, and she regrets that her death has undoubtedly caused them. She wonders how Wyatt and Rufus are taking it. She wonders if anyone has told Flynn. She wonders if he still has the journal or if that has vanished. 

Lucy tries to take a breath, but once again, it doesn’t work. She tries not to panic at the strangeness of this place, of the weird sensations pouring over her skin. Now that she has had more time to process, she realizes it feels almost like mist with a hint of something more dangerous. She shuts her eyes and when she reopens them, the shifting hues of her surroundings are no more easy to discern.

She decides to explore her new setting. She finds it strange that she has not encountered Emma, her mother, or Nicholas Keynes yet, but she is not one to complain about that. She has no idea what she will do when she finds them, so she really cannot complain. She thinks she’s running, but motion seems almost pointless. 

She's never going to escape this, is she? She's going to be stuck on her own forever, with maybe visits from Jiya, and she is never going to escape. She swallows, biting back the nausea that quickly overwhelms her. 

She sinks to her knees. She can do this, she tells herself. She busted her ass to get the tenure at Stanford, to get her degrees, even though that was her mother's dream and not her own. She survived the car. She doesn't know whether to believe she can exist here forever. And somewhere in her heart, she knows her time is extremely limited. 

She doesn't know how to escape or end this. She doesn't think she has ever felt more powerless. 

.oOo. 

Jiya clutches Rufus’ arm and grimaces when she sees Wyatt go to punch Flynn. She's never seen Flynn truly in action, and even she knows there is no way this can end well for her friend. Both Wyatt and Flynn land a couple of punches, and Jiya is of half a mind to try to break it up herself when Agent Christopher storms in. 

Agent Christopher doesn't have to do anything more than just glare at the two fighting men to break it apart. Jiya envies that sharpness that the Agent has even though she knows that she could never pull it off the same way. Jiya smirks and bumps her shoulder affectionately against Rufus'. 

“Save your fighting for Rittenhouse,” Agent Christopher scolds the two men. Flynn looks down at his feet in a way that Jiya might think is apologetic while Wyatt glares at Flynn and gives Agent Christopher a defiant look. 

Wyatt turns away, snarls, and then points at Flynn. “After everything he’s done, we’re supposed to just let him live with us? Have you lost your mind? He could kill us all and force Rufus to take him to wherever to upend the time!” 

Flynn crosses his arms and gives Wyatt such an unimpressed look that Jiya has to press a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. “Yes, because that wasn’t exactly your plan anyway.” 

Jiya thinks that Wyatt might hit Flynn again, and she thinks that really, there is a decent chance Flynn would not fight back this time.

.oOo.

Garcia hates himself just a little bit. Fighting Wyatt feels good, but he knows he should not do it right now. He wants to. He wants to just let go and fight, but he cannot do that. If he does, he knows he will be sent right back to solitary confinement, and that would be very contrary to his goals. It’s a pity, really.

He turns to Agent Christopher, still holding his arms across his chest. “What are you doing to get Lucy back?” He can see Wyatt’s incredulous look, and he is not oblivious to anyone else’s looks of incredulity either. He does not care. _Let them wonder,_ he thinks, smirking. Agent Christopher shifts slightly, and Garcia narrows his eyes. “Are you not doing anything?!”

“We don’t know how to save her without risking the Mothership falling back into the hands of Rittenhouse,” Agent Christopher admitted. “And we cannot go back in time without risking Lucy being erased entirely.”

Now Garcia really wants to punch something because dammit he does not want to be helpless again as someone he cares about dies. He will not sit back and let Rittenhouse take Lucy the way they did Lorena and Iris. 

“So you’re going to sit back and just let Rittenhouse do whatever they want in our time?” Garcia makes a noise of blatant disgust. He shakes his head and walks away to his new quarters. He needs to plan.

.oOo.

Denise watches Garcia leave with a strong feeling of dread. She still is not fully convinced that rescuing the former time terrorist from solitary confinement was a good idea, but she knows that she is in this for the long haul now. She can’t pretend that what she means to do isn’t dangerous. She doesn’t know exactly how they are going to get Lucy back, or if they even can, but if they can, she knows they need to try. She thinks of Lucy almost as a daughter, not just as an asset as she tries to lead the others to believe, and she can’t bear to let her burn either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, your thoughts are very appreciated


	4. Chapter Three

Lucy is scared as she navigates this eerie timescape. She is able to move, and she is definitely able to explore. The colors are constantly shifting and rippling, but now she is able to determine shapes. There’s trees, and there’s buildings, and while they are not totally constant, they are there and she can see them. It makes finding her way around much simpler. 

She watches as light forms next to her, and Lucy is rather unsurprised to see it’s once again Jiya who has appeared. Jiya looks more tired that she did the last time she appeared. Once again, Lucy helps the other woman to her feet. “Thanks,” Jiya tells her, smiling. “Where is this?”

Lucy shrugs. “I haven’t figured that out yet. Lost in time, I guess. I’m not sure. Do you know how you got here?”

Jiya bites her lip and shrugs. “Ever since my time on the Lifeboat, I’ve been having these visions, I guess. Seeing other moments in time. I guess it makes sense I would see you here. I’ve been seeing stuff too, about Rufus. Lucy —” And then, Jiya disappears because of course she does just when she’s started explaining. Lucy is once again left in the dark. 

She bites her lip and shakes her head as though to physically shake the thoughts out of it. She decides to go into one of the houses in front of her. She doesn’t have anything to lose, and it is not like she can stand around and wait for Rittenhouse to catch up to her. If she does, then she’s lost everything. She’s done that once now, and she’s frankly had enough of it.

The house is almost normal. The shapes are almost exactly that of the home she had once had with her mother, except that as far as she can tell, the neighborhood is completely different and empty. It feels alien to her, but it’s still all too familiar. If she had the option, she would curl in on herself and sob. But she doesn’t. She knows that if she cries, she will never stop. It’s why she still hasn’t cried since before her mother kidnapped her. 

Lucy swallows. She needs to compartmentalize and keep her wits about her. She’s not trapped, and she is going to escape this eventually. So she needs to focus on how she’s going to do that. She wishes that Jiya had not vanished again so that maybe they could have discussed this. She knows that somehow, Jiya must be able to help her if they can find one another here. 

Lucy pokes around the house. She opens the fridge only to find it empty. She walks into her mother’s library to find it empty of books. Eventually she makes it upstairs to her own room, but without her personal artifacts, it barely feels like hers. She avoids her mother’s room. She does not want to risk somehow summoning her mother by thinking about her in a place that used to matter so much to her mother. She doesn’t want to think about her mother dying of cancer, and then how that blessed, peaceful, stable reality was ripped away from her. 

It’s as she is lost in thought that it finally occurs to her that she can hear someone else. Someone else who is crying. Lucy pales. 

.oOo.

“I guess it makes sense I would see you here. I’ve been seeing stuff too, about Rufus. Lucy, where are we?” Jiya mumbles, but she is already being pulled away from Lucy. She’s mumbling the last part in the corporeal world. She is faced with Flynn and Rufus both standing over her. She isn’t startled by Rufus being there because he is there more often than not. She is surprised by Flynn though, as she could have thought he couldn’t care less about any of them except Lucy. 

“What was that?” Flynn demands, and for a second, Jiya is sure he’s going to grab her and shake her until she answers. 

Rufus flutters round her, trying to assess if she’s hit her head or anything like that. He wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her to himself comfortingly. Jiya smiles up at him. She can feel Flynn’s eyes boring into them both, furious because she did not answer him at once. 

“What was that?” Flynn growls again. His voice cracks, but somehow that does not shatter his menacing air. If anything, it just makes him all the more menacing. 

“Can you let it rest?” Rufus asks, “Please? She just had a seizure, she doesn—”

“No, it’s fine,” Jiya protests. “I get these visions when I have the seizures. Sometimes, it’s the future or the past or both. Usually focused around Rufus. And lately, well. I have seen Lucy.” She takes a deep, shaky breath as though trying to expel that world suspended in time. 

“Where is she?” Flynn presses at the same moment Rufus asks, “What?”

“She — I don’t know. She’s nowhere, I guess? She says she thinks that she is lost in time,” Jiya bites her lip and looks away, lost in thought. “I don’t think she’s sure. She seemed surprised to even be there, but I don’t think she wanted me to see that? I’m sorry, that’s all there is.”

.oOo.

Garcia feels as though he has been punched repeatedly until he’s bruised and bloody and out of breath. The wind has been knocked from him, and he does not quite no how to get it back. 

He knows he should be scared. He tells himself that, lets it grind into his head like a tattoo. But he tells himself he should not be scared for her because she’s a competent woman — could anyone but a competent woman destroy the goddamn Mothership? He should be afraid for himself because she is his biggest hope for destroying Rittenhouse. She is everything he has built himself on, and if she’s gone, then he could shatter into a thousand pieces. Yes, he should be terrified because Lucy is lost in time and there is nothing else left for him.

She can’t be gone. She can’t be dead. But lost in time — that almost feels worse to him. He’s been in war. Losing people is a familiar dirge. He doesn’t want her to be gone, but he realizes he isn’t desperate for her for his own sake. He wants her to be here for her own sake too. He would give anything for her to be alive again. To be here and not lost in time.

Garcia realizes he is lost in a different way, for he understands he now cares for Lucy far more than he possibly could for himself. It’s infuriating to him that he has no way of getting her back. He has less of an idea how to than he did how to get Lorena and Iris back. He still doesn’t have Lorena and Iris back. They’re still not alive. How can he possibly hope to bring Lucy back? 

.oOo.

Wyatt watches Rufus and Jiya walk away from Flynn. It doesn’t take a genius historian to understand that Flynn is having a private moment. Wyatt knows he is not meant to see that the time terrorist is only barely holding on. Wyatt does not know how to give Flynn privacy. Even if he did, he would not give it to the man. Flynn doesn’t deserve that after everything he’s done. 

Wyatt’s angry that Flynn’s talked to Rufus at all. Rufus doesn’t deserve to have Flynn’s freedom rubbed in his face every day. Jiya — well, he’s a bit mad at Jiya too, for not hating Flynn and protecting her boyfriend. And with what she had just told Flynn and Rufus — could it possibly even be true? Could she have seen Lucy?

It’s hard to believe. But then, everything they do — that’s hard to believe. Everything has been ripped out from under them too, even if it happened in much more concrete ways to Lucy. He needs her back. They were a team. They need to work together again. He misses her, and he loves her. He would give anything to see her face again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thanks so much for your reviews and support!! i look forward to hearing from you! =)


	5. Chapter Four

Lucy follows the sound of the crying. It’s a heartbreaking sound, and she follows it. She need to find the person who is crying because damn does that sound sound incredibly familiar. And if there’s — If there’s a chance it could be — 

Lucy nearly faints when she opens the door, if that is actually a thing that is possible for her to do here. She knows that voice, but it has been forever since she has heard it. She’s the only one who has ever heard it now. And then it hits her like a train crash. Oh god. Amy. Amy’s here. Amy. 

It’s been long enough that Lucy struggles to believe this. She almost doesn’t want to believe that Amy can possibly be here. If this Amy isn’t real, then Lucy does not quite know how she could survive this. Lucy stands, staring at the shaking figure on the floor. Amy’s hair is longer, curling now as she has not had the ability to straighten it here. There’s flickers of color on Amy, the same way there are on the world around them. But on Amy, they’re not as strong, and her image shows through.

Lucy swallows, and she knows that tears must be dripping down her face. She doesn’t know what to do with this. It could be a trick. It could be like her mother, getting her back only to find out that the truth is much worse than she could have imagined. Lucy stands frozen. She desperately wants to say something. She’s not the kind of person to run away from something, but even she wants to flee, to gather her thoughts and write them down before she tries speaking to Amy. 

It’s Amy who turns around and forces the issue. “L-Lucy? What? How? Are you real?”

Lucy is at a loss for words, something that does not usually occur. “I am. You — You were erased.”

Amy stares at her for a second before nodding her head. “How did I — So I’m what? Am I dead? Are you dead?” Lucy stares at her face. She cannot help it. She realizes that she had forgotten the way Amy’s hair parts so similarly to her own. She’s forgotten just how Amy looks when she’s truly properly lost. She thinks that maybe her image of Amy, the one she’s developed since she lost Amy, might be a little too strong, always steady and confident. She’s neglected to remember the sister she’s always comforted, the girl who relied so heavily on her support. “You’re. There was a time machine, and Mom never met Dad, and you were never born. You were erased from time, and I’m the only one who remembers you. I — I’ve been trying to get you back.”

“Wait, time machine? What? How are you still here if Mom and Dad never met? And how are you here? What happened to you? Lucy —” They can’t breathe here, and yet Amy still seems to be hyperventilating and on the verge of a panic attack. Lucy pulls Amy to herself instinctually, uses her hand to draw gentle circles on her sisters back to comfort her. Just as she has always done.

Before Lucy knows it, she’s crying too. Crying over the sister she’s never truly had the chance to mourn. When their sobbing subsides, Lucy pulls back. “Yes, time machines. Two of them. One was stolen by a man named Garcia Flynn, and we took the other one to stop him. That’s why the Agent wanted to see me that night. Anyway, between him changing time, and us fixing it, changes were made that erased you from existence. I’m your half-sister. Mom had an affair with a professor named Benjamin Cahill, and so here I am. As for how I got here, let’s just say that there were some issues with the time machine.”

“Okay, that’s a lot,” Amy exclaims. “So this guy just shows up and steals a time machine, and you’re called to help track him down?” She bites her lip. “That is so cool!”

Lucy shakes her head. “More stressful and life-threatening, really.” She bites her lip. She has to remember to keep her wits about her. She’s already let herself be mystified by a family come back from dying. She knows what Emma said about preventing her from retrieving Amy. She knows, and like hell is she going to risk getting fooled a second time. She is not letting herself get betrayed by yet another member of her family. She takes a step back. “What do you know about Rittenhouse?”

.oOo.

Jiya wonders if she could ever fall into one of her visions intentionally. It doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility for the future even though right now she simply falls into her seizures without meaning to. It’s terrifying, and perhaps everyone else here would rather ignore her visions or tell her to go see a doctor (she’d had a lovely conversation about that earlier and there is no way in hell she is going to be her father), but Jiya is determined that she can do something with this. 

All of this, all of it, would be so senseless if there weren’t something larger at work here. This has to be happening for a reason. There has to be a reason for her visions. She must be supposed to do something. Save Lucy. Tell the team the future. She is supposed to help somehow.

She’s made up her mind: She’s going to get Lucy back if it kills her. Lucy is like a sister to her. A friend. And, the only other woman not the age of her mother in the time team. And Lucy’s one of the only ones who doesn’t seem to forget about her in favor of Rufus, so there’s that going for Lucy too. 

Jiya thinks for a second. She might be the most recent pilot, and she might have been at Mason Industries for only a couple years, but she knows that Anthony, Emma, and Rufus aren’t the only pilots. There have to have been others before. So she starts planning, trying to determine how she can find out about them without freaking Connor out badly enough that he hides everything from her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, i love to hear from you!
> 
> @by-the-virtue-of-the-muse on tumblr


	6. Chapter Five

Amy stares at Lucy, eyes wide. It almost is enough to make Lucy feel guilty. Almost — Lucy’s not stupid, and she has learned from her mistakes in dealing with her mother. Lucy crosses her arms. Amy looks almost teary. “What’s Rittenhouse? Why are you asking me this?” 

Lucy bites her lip. She doesn’t want to be asking Amy this, but with knowing what she knows of her family, she doesn’t really think she has a choice. “Because it’s our family, and I have to know you don’t work for them.” Lucy waits for her sister’s gaze to become malicious or for her to beg for Lucy’s forgiveness or anything. Lucy tells herself she knows better than to hope this is a genuine reunion with someone as amazing as the sister she remembers.

“What are you talking about? What do you mean it’s our family? I’ve never even heard of it!” Amy definitely looks like she’s about to cry now. “It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone in fucking months, and you’re asking me these questions?”

Lucy deflates slightly, trying to fight between the guilt that sits in her stomach and sheer practicality. She can’t risk being disappointed like this again. “I have to know, Amy. They destroy everything and manipulate events to be a white supremacist’s wet dream. They control everything. Mom — she was one of them, and because of it she kidnapped me to force me to join them. Drugged me and everything. It’s in both of our blood, and she was trying to groom us for it. So I need to know: Are you Rittenhouse?”

Amy shudders. “Do you think so little of me now that I’m gone? I’d never, ever join anything so horrible.” She pauses for a second. “Lucy, whatever this Rittenhouse is, I’m glad Mom never told me about it. I want nothing to do with it.”

Lucy smiles at the answer, and then she searches her sister’s face to make sure it is no lie. “Okay, I believe you, then.”

“You better,” Amy retorts, crossing her arms and frowning. “Look, I just want to go home.”

Lucy grimaces. “So do I, but we don’t really have a home anymore. I don’t know where we can go. My friends — Wyatt and Rufus and Jiya — they’re alive and probably have somewhere! If we ever get out of here, we’ll stay with them!”

Amy looks at her dubiously. “I’ve been here for ages. Do you really think we can get out of here?”

.oOo.

Researching is not one of Jiya’s favored hobbies. It never has been. She supposes that Lucy must be far more fond of research than she is, considering the other woman has a PhD in both history and anthropology. Jiya is more of the type to program some new program to do her research for her. Unfortunately, since she has to go through her boss’s things, that’s not exactly an option. 

First, she needs to figure out Connor’s schedule. The problem with this is that he is remarkably inconsistent. He spends most of his time deep in a bottle, for starters. But beyond that, there are few guarantees. He’s the type of person who sleeps only when tired and spends the rest of the time awake and sneaking up on people. Jiya does not want to be snuck up on when she’s researching. And Connor will hide everything if he knows. 

Second, she needs to be perfectly sure that there is no possible way for anyone to walk in while she’s doing this. Because no one can know, least of all Connor Mason. The problem is is that she doesn’t quite know how to secure the room she’s searching. She’d need to find out from someone the best way to do that. There’s no real electric parts, so Rufus is out. That leaves Agent Christopher, Flynn, and Wyatt. She needs to decide who she can trust with this and who is least likely to involve anyone else or make a fuss. 

Well, when she puts it that way, there really is only one person she can trust with this. She’s not exactly thrilled, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. She’ll have to talk to Flynn. She’s not as scared of him as the rest of the team is. She doesn’t hate him as much. But damn, asking for his help is still an intimidating prospect. 

She tiptoes to his room and raps lightly on the door.

.oOo.

Garcia generally assumes that he will be left alone so long as he is in his room. It’s not a bad assumption to make. Jiya and Rufus and Denise might attempt to speak to him if he leaves, and if Wyatt leaves his room too, they pair will certainly end up arguing or even fighting. He’s happy to stay in his room. Well, he’s not happy, but it’s less irritating to stay in his room even if it reminds him of the cell he only just escaped. It’s less complicated.

So of course, he is incredibly surprised when there is a knock on the door even if he had heard the footsteps pause outside it. He sets down the book he’s reading (it’s one of the ones that Lucy’s written, this one on the history of San Francisco though he certainly found Lucy’s study of him in this timeline fascinating). 

He stands up and answers the door. Jiya stands outside, crossing her arms. He’s not surprised it’s her. It would either be her or Agent Christopher. Jiya smirks when she sees he’s opened the door. “Right, so you’re going to help me with something.”

Garcia’s eyebrows shoot up. “I am?”

Jiya’s smirking, and if he weren’t who he is, he might have found it intimidating. “You are. I need to see if Connor’s former pilots have had visions like mine. I think I could use them to get Lucy back, but I need more information. So, you’re going to keep people away while I look through Connor’s things.”

Garcia swallows. He hadn’t expected Jiya to be bold like this, and he wonders if he should be offended that she knew he would agree. “You don’t trust him to help you?”

Jiya narrows her eyes at him. “Are you going to help me find Lucy or not?”

He exhales sharply and throws his hands dramatically up as though surrendering. He shoots her a look to tell her that _obviously, he will, what does she take him for_. He grabs a sweater from on top of his bed and pulls it on, ignoring how it messes up the sleeves of his burgundy turtleneck. “So, you’re trusting me with this and not Wyatt? Concerned pretty boy will raise a stink about it?”

“He’ll insist on bringing Rufus in on it, and everyone knows Rufus can’t keep a secret,” Jiya explains, “and also Agent Christopher is probably expecting something like this from him, not us, so that works to our advantage. Especially if he’s very obviously sulking somewhere else.” 

Garcia smirks. “Which, of course, he’s already doing.”

Jiya nods. “Of course. Now let’s hurry. Connor’s hung over on the couch, so the faster the better. We might only have one chance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, comments give me life. i love all of you and want to give a big thank you to everyone who's sticking with me!

**Author's Note:**

> so is there a timeless/garcy discord someone can link me to, and if no, is anyone interested? Also, comments make me want to write.


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